Reaction To Eircom decision

News of Eircoms forced decision has gone worldwide. BoingBoing starts with "Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims."Reddit picks up the thread and basically decides that Eircom should be bombarded with false allegations on government Internet Addresses. Three unsubstantiated claims and they're out. 

One Reddit user went as far as to create a blog http://cutoffireland.blogspot.com/. "You guys want to indiscriminately cutoff your citizens internet connections, well the rest of the world can just block your whole country from their servers. I urge the same for any country considering letting these horrendous 3 strikes policies fly." At the end of the post is an encouragement to admins worldwide to block Irish IP's followed by a very long list Irish IP's.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, well known for mounting lawsuits against the RIAA in support of ordinary internet users, gave a more sober view. "The Irish Recorded Music Industry (IRMA), the local recording industry organization, and Irish internet service provider Eircom announced a settlement this morning, ending a lawsuit in which IRMA was demanding that the ISP pro-actively discriminate content on their networks." The nub of the argument is Eircom couldn't afford the lawsuit so it folded resulting in this woeful settlement.

The article also reprinted a part of the settlement as obtained by Irish tech journalist Adrian Weckler. The settlement says that the ISP will, when given a list of IP addresses by the music industry:

1) inform its broadband subscribers that the subscriber's IP address has been detected infringing copyright and

2) warn the subscriber that unless the infringement ceases the subscriber will be disconnected and

3) in default of compliance by the subscriber with the warning it will disconnect the subscriber"

The BoingBoing article ends on a somewhat positive note. Ronan Lupton, chairman of Alto, which represents telecoms operators other than Eircom, said the agreement “is not one enforceable on the rest of the industry given the direct nature of the action against Eircom”. The comments followed are recommendations to change to various ISPs. 

Depressing that it's our country that has been hoodwinked and bullied into making this ludicrous 3 strikes decision. The decision worldwide has not yet been made, but for our county it has been made for us.